THE SONIC BOOMER
There’s a phrase I’ve often considered that goes, “Be careful what you wish for — you may get it.”
It’s true. Ask anyone who works in a candy store. Their childhood wish of “having all the candy in the world” morphs into “sugar overload” in about a week.
The problem seems to be in the details. If they had wished for “all the candy I care to eat” or “candy without calories” or “a world without diabetes,” things may have worked out better.
But that’s why we have lawyers — to get the details correct and then write them down. Those bookcases filled with law books that appear in every attorney’s TV ad? Details. Details that were initially overlooked and ended up causing so much trouble that someone had to hire a professional.
When I was younger, I used to wish I could have a typewriter mounted onto my car’s dashboard because I seemed to get so many good column ideas while driving. But I knew that would be crazy-dangerous. That was never going to happen.
Ha! Today, half the drivers on the road are typing things into their phones as they fly down the highway. The other half are reading texts that have arrived from someone else. I had never considered incoming typing. Microphones and speakers embedded into dashboards and steering wheels are an advancement, but still a huge distraction. Entire corporate meetings are being conducted between the exits on I-95!
And how many children have told their parents, “I wish I could live with you forever!” Well, thanks to rising home costs and a scarcity of rentals, many of those children are. Of course, it’s not as much fun when they’re in their 20s or 30s. Especially for the parents.
And then there are the conflicting wishes. Wishing that your children become successful and wishing to always have them live nearby doesn’t always work out. Of course, you want them to take that high-paying job. Wait a minute — which state is it in?
Two wishes that always seem to make sense are for good health and more time. But wait. If you don’t have one, do you really want the other? If you’re painfully sick, do you really want that to go on interminably? And if you feel great, would you really be OK knowing that your time is going to be cut short?
I also used to wish I could see into the future. Thank goodness that wish never came true! Sometimes I can barely stand looking into next following week!
A long life is challenging. The pursuit of happiness is especially taxing. If, from the beginning, we knew all the things we were going to have to overcome in our lives, we’d probably be too depressed to go forward. And if we didn’t go forward, we’d never get to enjoy the fact that we survived. We conquered! We surmounted every problem!
With the help of our lawyers, of course.
